Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to an electrode assembly and an electrochemical cell including the same, and more particularly to an electrode assembly fabricated by a stacking method other than a folding method and accomplishing minute alignment and stable fixing, and an electrochemical cell including the same.
Description of the Related Art
Secondary batteries may be classified into various types according to the structure of electrode assemblies. For example, the secondary batteries may be classified into a stack type structure, a wrapping type (jelly-roll type) structure or a stack/folding type structure. For the stack type structure, a cathode, a separator, and an anode are cut into a certain size and then are stacked one by one to form an electrode assembly. In this case, the separator is disposed between the cathode and the anode. For the wrapping type structure, a cathode, a separator, an anode and a separator are formed into sheet shapes, stacked one by one, and then wrapped to form an electrode assembly. For the stack/folding type structure, a full cell or a bicell is formed first, and is wrapped by using a separator sheet to form an electrode assembly. After cutting the cathode, the separator and the anode into a certain size and stacking thereof one by one, the full cell or the bicell may be formed. (The full cell or the bicell respectively includes one or more cathodes, separators and anodes.) The structure of the stack/folding type is disclosed in more detail in Patent Literatures 1 and 2.
However, since the electrode units (cathode, separator and anode) constituting the electrode assembly are stacked separately, the minute alignment of the electrode assembly is very difficult. In addition, a large number of processes are necessary to produce the electrode assembly. In general, for the manufacture of the stack/folding type structure, two lamination apparatuses and one folding apparatus are necessary. Thus, the fabricating process of the electrode assembly is very complicated. Particularly, since the full cells or the bicells are stacked through folding in the stack/folding type structure, the minute alignment of the full cells or the bicells is very difficult.    (Patent Literature 1) Korean Publication Patent No. 2001-0082059    (Patent Literature 2) Korean Publication Patent No. 2001-0082060